


the gravity of the situation

by lupinely



Category: Cowboy Bebop
Genre: M/M, Zero-gravity sex, i made a joke about them boning in zero-g on twitter and then i wrote it, wow there's a tag for it. thats wild thanks ao3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 18:10:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10949964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lupinely/pseuds/lupinely
Summary: “Come on, man.” Spike is spinning gently now, rotating so that he is upside down relative to Jet’s position and the room around them. “Don’t tell me that you’ve never thought about it.”“Thought about what?”“Sex.In zero-g.”Jet does laugh. “Oh, please. I don’t even want to begin thinking about the logistics of that.”





	the gravity of the situation

 

 

 

Any child of the twenty-first century solar system can tell you that gravity is relative and malleable in ways that scientists still don’t understand yet. Sometimes people born on the same planet can recognize that in another person before the other person even says anything: something about the way they walk, whether with a heavier trod, like someone from Earth, or a lighter step like a Martian-born or someone from one of Jupiter’s countless moons. Eventually as you get older you get used well-enough to what is considered standard gravity—about 9.8 m/s2, the standard for Earth and therefore imposed wherever possible upon the rest of the solar system just like Earth’s twenty-four hour day.

Gravity can be artificially generated on spaceships, most commonly through the application of centripetal force. This is the manner of artificial gravity used on the _Bebop_ , which means that there are places on the ship outside of the inner rotating system that never experience artificial gravity. In those places, magnetized shoes can keep you firmly rooted to the floor in lieu of gravity if you want. Ed, who doesn’t wear shoes, has perfected the other method of traversing the _Bebop_ : somersaulting, with exceeding grace, through the air and kicking off of walls in the desired direction when necessary. The rest of the crew each has their own preferences. Poor Ein mostly floats; Faye prefers weightlessness, too. Spike does whatever strikes his fancy that particular moment, and Jet prefers both feet planted on the ground, thank you very much, whenever possible. Spike thinks maybe that is because Jet was born on Ganymede, but there is no telling for certain. Maybe he’s just boring like that.

In any case, the crew quarters have gravity—at least while the centripetal rotation mechanisms are functioning. Which, at the moment, they are not.

“I am so sick of this!” Faye says after getting stuck in her bed when she tried tucking the sheets down really tightly to hold herself in place and needing Spike to free her. “Who designed this bullcrap ship?”

“You’re free to find another one that suits you better,” Jet snaps. Any perceived slights against the _Bebop_ tend to make him snippy. Spike hides a smile by ducking his head and pretending to be intensely interested in the floor.

Faye huffs and floats down the hallway towards the living room, where Ed and Ein are playing chess (the pieces are magnetized to the board). Spike, suspended in midair in Jet’s bedroom, tilts his head back so that he can see Jet (standing firmly on the magnetized floor) and grin at him. “You didn’t design it, right?”

“No,” Jet says grumpily. “But there’s nothing wrong with the _Bebop_ the way it is. It’s not its fault something broke and we can’t fix it until we get to Venus.”

Spike hums something noncommittal and almost laughs when Jet throws him a glare. He manages to suppress it. “It does make me wonder about those ships that don’t have any artificial gravity at all, though,” Spike says lightly. “Makes me wonder whether those architects didn’t have some interesting kinks.”

“What?”

“Come on, man.” Spike is spinning gently now, rotating so that he is upside down relative to Jet’s position and the room around them. “Don’t tell me that you’ve never thought about it.”

“Thought about what?”

 _“Sex._ In zero-g.”

Jet does laugh. “Oh, please. I don’t even want to _begin_ thinking about the logistics of that.”

“No?” Spike’s hair always gets into his face when there’s no gravity, which is probably the most annoying thing about it. He pushes it out of the way and wonders if he will be able to seduce Jet while hanging upside down in midair in his bedroom. He likes his chances. “You can’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”

“Let me guess: you’ve tried it.”

“No,” Spike says truthfully. “But I have thought about it...in detail.” He wiggles his eyebrows at Jet, who rolls his eyes.

“Only you, Spike,” Jet says. But he also nudges the door to his bedroom closed with his foot—casually, like it is an afterthought.

Nice, Spike thinks. He is still spinning slowly in the air, so that now he can no longer see Jet but can hear him moving about the room. “Pull me down, will you? I’m getting seasick.”

Jet catches Spike by his upper arms and gently rights him, pulling him down so that Spike’s feet touch the floor and they are once again on eye level with each other. “Just activate the magnets in your shoes, Spike. I’m not here to pull you around the ship when you get stuck somewhere in the zero-g.”

“Where is your cunning logistical mind?” Spike asks. “If we’re gonna zero-g fuck, magnetic shoes have to be the first things to go.” And he leans in and kisses Jet before he can say anything.

“I never said I was gonna do that,” Jet says against Spike’s mouth. Spike can feel him smiling.

“There’s still two days between us and Venus,” Spike says. “I’m bored out of my mind, man. Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”

“No,” Jet says; “not even a little bit.” But he starts toeing off his shoes, and Spike grins. He kicks off his own shoes and reaches to start undoing Jet’s jumpsuit, peeling it away and sliding his hands underneath Jet’s undershirt to touch his abdomen, his chest, the ridges of his hips.

“Impatient,” Jet says, laughing at him, and Spike doesn’t even really care. Around everyone else he tries to be someone he’s not: but here, now, alone with Jet, it doesn’t matter who he is. It doesn’t matter because Jet already knows that person, and apparently likes him enough to stick around.

“Maybe,” Spike says, and he starts kissing Jet’s neck and shoulder. “You’re the one who keeps running around the _Bebop_ with your shirt off and engine grease on your face.”

“I didn’t even realize you noticed.”

Spike makes a sort of growling noise. “I notice everything.” He slips his hands under the hem of Jet’s boxers and grabs his ass with both hands, his tongue sliding over Jet’s collarbone.

Without their shoes, they have drifted towards the center of the room: the true center, suspended in midair. The only thing there to hold onto is Jet: and so Spike, with great enthusiasm, does. They make a sort of senseless tangle, the two of them there suspended; Spike, trying to find some sort of purchase, wraps his legs around Jet’s waist and pins himself there so that he can get Jet’s shirt off and kiss him again.

Jet, for his part, is enthusiastically undoing the buttons of Spike’s button-down, and he laughs when Spike’s thighs go around his hips. “You see how difficult this is?”

“I like the challenge,” Spike says, and he flings Jet’s undershirt off into oblivion. Jet does the same with Spike's button-down, and they float away aimlessly.

“Pants,” Spike says, focused on the task before him, but it is impossible to get the rest of Jet or Spike’s clothes off while Spike has his legs wrapped around Jet. They briefly separate, wriggling in midair to get their clothes off as quickly as possible and get back to each other. Spike is already hard, but Jet isn’t quite there yet, which Spike thinks is incredibly rude.

Spike’s socks and Jet’s boxers drift away. Spike waves his hand trying to reach Jet, but can’t manage it. “Jet,” he says, “can you reach that wall, and just sort of—”

Jet snorts. “I told you,” he says, gently shoving himself off the wall so that he floats towards Spike, “that this was a stupid fucking idea.”

“Less talking about how dumb I am,” Spike says, “more fucking, please.”

Jet kisses him this time, and Spike lets himself open up to it, one of Jet’s hands tugging through Spike’s hair, the other at the small of his back pulling Spike flush against his own body. Spike has never said anything about it, but he is still fairly certain that Jet knows just how much Spike loves Jet’s body, loves how easily Jet can pick Spike up whenever he wants to, loves that when Jet pins Spike down against the bed, no matter what Spike does he cannot quite get free unless he asks. Spike thinks briefly that it is a little sad there will be no bed-pinning tonight thanks to the lack of gravity.

“How are we supposed to reach the condoms?” Jet asks after a long time of kissing Spike, and Spike says, “Oh, goddammit.” The two of them struggle for the next few minutes to reach Jet’s bedside table where the box of condoms is inside the drawer.

“Don’t drop them,” Jet says as Spike pulls one out.

“Please,” Spike says; “ye of little faith,” and he tears the condom open with his teeth.

“Have we actually established what we’re doing here?” Jet says. His voice remains admirably casual and steady even as Spike rolls the condom onto Jet’s dick and starts scrounging around for the lube.

“I feel like if we’re doing zero-g sex, we might as well go all the way,” Spike says. “Blow jobs later. I want you to fuck me, big guy.”

Jet briefly closes his eyes, as he does whenever Spike teasingly calls him that. “You know I can’t stand you, right?”

Spike, his one hand slick with lube, leans in and kisses him while wrapping that hand around Jet’s dick. “Yeah,” he says, stroking him, “I know.”

Spike doesn’t need a lot of prep—they do this often enough, after all—but it takes more effort and concentration than he anticipated to get Jet inside of him without the directional assistance of gravity to aid them. Finally they return to the position they were in originally, Spike with his legs wrapped around Jet’s waist, and Jet with his arms holding tight to Spike’s shoulders. They are surrounded by nothing but air, and the experience is utterly surreal: nothing touching either of them but each other.

“This is such a stupid idea,” Jet says under his breath.

“Whatever.” Spike kisses Jet and nips his bottom lip with his teeth. “You’re the one turned on by it right now.”

Jet laughs and starts trying to fuck him. This, too, is another logistical nightmare—there is nothing for either of them to hold onto for support, so they can only move against each other, clinging to each other, which proves to be quickly exhausting. Spike squeezes his eyes shut and tries to get into a rhythm and finds it beyond him.

After a few moments, Jet asks, “Are you even getting anything from this?”

Spike opens one eye and looks at him. “Shut up.”

“Just asking,” Jet says innocently, and he kisses Spike’s forehead. His right hand slips between their bodies to wrap around Spike’s cock and gently begin jerking him off. “This better?”

Spike exhales and presses his mouth to Jet’s neck. “Yeah,” he says. “Fuck me, would you?”

Jet laughs and does his best. It is an admirable effort, really; Spike commends him. It doesn’t quite live up to his zero-g fucking fantasy, but to be fair he never really considered any of the logistics that Jet is so fond of reminding him about.

Soon Spike does begin to feel it. “There,” he says; “right there.”

“Trust me, I’m trying,” Jet says, a little gruffly. Spike knows that gruffness means that Jet is getting close too. Spike tightens his thighs around Jet’s hips and makes it his mission to leave the darkest, biggest bruise with his mouth on Jet’s shoulder that he can.

Jet comes first, gasping against Spike’s neck, and he keeps jerking Spike off through it, which Spike appreciates. He thinks Jet can tell that he does when Spike can’t keep from moaning and biting down hard on the bruise that he has made on Jet’s shoulder.

“How bout it, Spike,” Jet says, pressing his mouth against Spike’s hair. “You gonna come for me, baby?”

“Oh Jesus Christ,” Spike groans, because, _really,_  'baby'? But his body betrays him, and in just a few more strokes he comes into Jet’s hand.

Jet kisses his temple. “There we go,” he says, and gently manages to extricate himself from Spike.

“Shut up,” Spike says, wincing, and then he registers that they really are still just suspended in midair, and Jet is trying to reach the bedside table for some tissues to clean off his hand and Spike’s thighs.

“Ha ha,” Spike says—“look, it floats.”

Jet shoots him a glare and reaches the tissues, cleans himself up, and then he pulls the condom from his dick and ties it off. It floats away dejectedly.

“This is kind of gross after the fact,” Spike says. “Can you help me get down?”

“Yeah.” Jet pulls him down towards the bed and wraps his arms around him so that Spike is enveloped by Jet: his warmth, his body, his scent. He nuzzles against Spike's hair. “So is your curiosity satisfied?”

“Yeah,” Spike says. Jet kisses his forehead, and Spike makes a face and adds, for good measure, "For now." 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
